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20 Apr 2012

James Corden in One Man, Two Guvnors

Photo by Joan Marcus

Well, hallelujah! Broadway has not one, but three critical hits this week!

One, One Man, Two Guvnors, is a British import, as is often the case this time of year. But the other is all-American, Bruce Norris' Clybourne Park. The third, Peter and the Starcatcher, is American-made (playwright Rick Elice adapted it from the American kid-lit novel) but is co-directed by the Brit Roger Rees (with Alex Timbers).

It's such a pretty (and rare) sight when the critics are all pleased en masse. (Someone should take a picture.) Their heavenly week began with the April 18 opening the popular West End comedy One Man, Two Guvnors, an adaptation of a 1740s Carlo Goldoni comedy about a gluttonous manservant pulled between two bosses and two meal tickets. Starring James Corden as crazed butler Francis Henshall, and featuring audience participation and lively skiffle music, the show has burned with white-hot popularity since bowing at Nicholas Hytner's National Theatre of Great Britain. (Though Corden plays a corpulent character, the role is so athletic in its slapstick that he has reportedly lost 70 pounds since he first started playing it.)

So, what's it all add up to? According to the Post: "Pratfalls, spit takes, puns, improvisation, winking asides, slamming doors, clowning, audience participation, double entendres and triple takes." This is what Greek drama scholars would call "New Comedy" and what we think of as low comedy. But the critics weren't complaining. Satire and sophisticated wit is all very good, but we get quite a lot of that. Buffoonery and belly laughs — that we could use some of.

"This virtuoso banquet of slapstick farce and verbal jousting brings with it a shocking revelation: How starved we were for comedy," wrote Time Out, while Hollywood Reporter notes, "Few theatregoing experiences are as joyously liberating as being part of a packed house roaring with laughter at low comedy." The Times called it "ideal escapism for anxious times."

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Of course you can't please everyone. Linda Winer of Newsday wasn't among those roaring faces. "There's the squeaky dry, silly-smart kind we know from Monty Python, Michael Frayn and Tom Stoppard. I love that kind. Then there is the slapstick, pants-dropping, music-hall, silly-dumb sort that traces its stock-character, low-comedy pedigree back to 16th-century Italian commedia dell'arte, English pantomime and, clearly, Laurel (Brit) and Hardy (American). In this, I'm afraid you're on your own."

Christina Kirk and Frank Wood in Clybourne Park.

photo by Nathan Johnson

Winer was happier Clybourne Park, Bruce Norris' acidly pessimistic comedy-drama about racial and economic changes in a neighborhood over a 50-year period. The Pulitzer Prize winner opened April 19 after previous runs Off-Broadway and in Los Angeles. "Norris, who memorably said once in an interview that he doesn't 'do redemption,' has a clear-eyed — OK, delightfully mean-spirited — view about the marrow-deep limitations of selfishness and self-regard," wrote Winer. "Nobody — not even the pregnant deaf woman — is safe from his audacious revulsion with what one can either see as political correctness or hopeful civility. Even with ethnic-joke padding, the drama dares to disturb the placid chemistry of theatregoing with sparky, hilariously unrepentant observations about life — even life on Broadway — as we choose to know it."

Most critics had already seen the work (in this production) Off-Broadway in 2010. Their opinions of the play, the director, Pam MacKinnon, and the tight-knit cast had only improved since then. "Clybourne Park proves itself more vital and relevant than ever on a big Broadway stage," wrote the Times. AP said the work "is everything you want in a play: Smart, witty, provocative and wonderfully acted by the well-knit ensemble." Variety, meanwhile, observed, "Rarely in American drama have the gaps between what one wants to say, how one says it and what one really feels been as hilariously explored for dramatic effect as Norris is able to pull off here."

Critics were more split on the charms of Peter and the Starcatcher, a whimsically inventive and elemental retelling of how The Boy Who Never Grew Up came to be. Some believed the production had retained its scrappy charm. Others felt it had left it behind on Off-Broadway, where the show began. The Times called it "the most exhilarating example of locomotive storytelling on Broadway since the Royal Shakespeare Company's Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby visited three decades ago." And Backstage cried, "I'm happy to report that Peter has not given up a speck of its fairy dust-infused whimsy. This is a celebration of youth and of the power of theatre to inspire children and adults alike." However, AP thought while the "cast is fantastic and hardworking and collaborative, the sets are weirdly inventive, its trip north has not done it any favors. ...It's supposed to connect with kids and adults alike, but ends up shortchanging both with a frantic, indulgent mess." And Bloomberg snapped that the show "just can't stop crowing about how clever it is. I wanted to smack it."